I think people are continually surprised by how often I use believability as a metric when evaluating practical advice:
- have you had at least 3 successes in the domain?
- do you have a coherent explanation?
If yes, queue to test against reality. If no, discount advice.
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But what about SuRvIvOrShIp BiAs?
In my experience, this usually gets invoked by people who don’t like the advice they’re given.
In practice, 3 successes in a practical domain is plenty rigorous as a lower bar for practical advice.
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Another interesting quirk: this sounds suspiciously like ad hominem. It *does* mean I will write you off if you don’t have 3 successes in the domain you’re giving advice on.
But it also means I will shut up and listen if a junior person has more successes in a domain than I do.
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Oh this is not true. I can point to more than 3 examples of successful synthesis with your name attached!
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(I should also note that this epistemology is for practical advice; it doesn’t work for other kinds of truth).
Also here’s a gif because that gif of a bird is too damn cute
GIF
read image description
ALT
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